~ Paleo Friendly and Loving It!

Making the Decision to Start

This is Part 1 in a continuing series on the Gluten Free Casein Free diet. There is so much more to “biomedical” than just the diet, but for the time being, we’ll start here.

“The best time to begin the GFCF diet was last year.

The second best time is today.”

Making the decision to try a GFCF diet might be the hardest part. It looks scary because it is. The first thing you wonder is “What will my child eat?” The second thing you wonder is “Can we ever eat take-out again?”

Fortunately, the answer is “lots” and “probably”. We’ll get to all that.

Everyone has their own path to hearing about the GFCF diet. Perhaps you found it in a late-night Google session? Maybe, like me, you read a book by Jenny McCarthy? (She has three of them now, all good) Maybe you even dismissed it as the insane ravings of a blonde bimbo? (Guilty.) Except, then your child was officially diagnosed. And no one would help you.

No one.

So, you borrowed that tattered copy of Louder Than Words from the Library again. What did she call that treatment? You googled. Maybe you even joined the GFCF Kids Yahoo! group & lurked for awhile. You read stories of children who stopped flapping, started talking, made eye contact, started having regular, normal bowel movements, among many other things.

And you started to wonder – could this diet help my child too? The Autism Research Institute parent rating suggests a 66% success rate. That’s pretty high right?

At this point, I was willing to try just about anything to help my son & if you are here, you probably are too. So, now you’ve just made the hardest decision – to begin a lifestyle change.

Homework: Now that you’ve decided you will give the GFCF diet a try, you need to know what foods your child is eating. Sit down and record everything you remember your child eating over the last 2 weeks. Then, record each meal for at least a day, preferably a week. This is going to help you offer appropriate substitutes next week.

Also, record any behaviours (toe walking, head banging, leaning over objects, arm flapping etc) and bowel movements (loose, constipated, smelly, undigested foods) that you can. This is going to give you a record of things to change. Gather up any professional assessments and recent testing your child has done. Again, this will help you find your challenges.